Seven months ago, I was sadly shaken when a young cousin and her husband of only two years were killed in a senseless car accident.  My worry quotient amped up exponentially when a good friend of mine, who amazingly survived ovarian cancer years ago, found herself again sorting her way through treatment options provided by the County.

My sense of isolation and uncertainty seemed slight in comparison, yet, following the subtleties and depth of my feelings leading me to the decision to break up with my partner has been the hardest thing I can remember personally facing.

After nearly three years of feeling I had become a poster child for finding love over fifty and, after recognizing I enjoyed so many aspects of my life with John, I noticed the occasional twinges that something didn’t feel right became more frequent.

I examined my capacity for love and forgiveness, two streams that need to run without interruption, I think, if one is to live happily with another and at peace with oneself. I asked myself if I was expecting too much from a relationship. Didn’t I just want to be myself?  Didn’t I just want the safe company of another soul seeking the same kind of acceptance, encouragement and space to flourish?

There was no doubt in my mind that a great deal of love filled our house. I know this because I saw how often I was surprised by my feelings. (I relished our small routines; a morning kiss before John headed off to work, or how often I emailed afternoon pick me-ups, YouTube clips or Dilbert comic strips, just when I thought he might need a lift.)

I also saw that we had a widely divergent sense of what being with another meant, of what it meant to share a life. It sounds flimsy to say, that no one perspective is wrong, and yet wanting something your partner does not see as necessary, or would not even attempt to put into words, makes it’s hard not to conclude that something is not right.

So, I refused to believe that wanting a level of communion beyond the tenderness found in our shared experiences meant I was a untenably needy and dysfunctional, and I couldn’t bear to make someone I loved, who tried so hard to “do the right thing” feel wrong or inadequate either because he didn’t pick up on many of my emotional cues.

Over months, I tried to find a way to language this understanding and broker a kind settlement of our household and a kind resolution to our situation. Perhaps this was impossible to hope for.  In wanting to leave the relationship, even as I was concerned for his feelings, I was rejecting him. In being afraid to express all the things I felt, which made him unspeakably uncomfortable, I became unable to fall asleep.

It’s all in the open now; as much as we can communicate. I am moving to a new place shortly. My new home (a condo) is here in this neighborhood I’ve come to love.  I hope I may yet come over as a guest, as a friend, and sit on the back deck and indulge in a bleu cheese burger fresh off the grill this summer.

We are both trying to give each other space and find new boundaries despite our history of intimacy. I am giving him my piano when I leave. I think he’ll like that.

It’s not for lack of love, but I’ve opted to follow a stronger impulse to be aligned with my truth.  I believe he’s sad about this parting but also relieved. He wants to live his truth as well.

Loving someone and letting him go is no small thing.